There is No Normal

I am grateful to Linda George for precisely expressing the emotions I have been struggling with myself. I am certain I am not the only one. I considered writing a similar article myself, yet I could not find the right frame to wrap my thoughts within. To write about darker feelings requires compassionate care. I do not believe it is advisable to unload personal thoughts and emotions without some consideration of benefit to the reader. Sometimes a reader appreciates the words that echo and validates their own personal experience. However, the end result should never create or add to the gloom of spiritual hopelessness. Such service serves no one. We need to teach ourselves how to swim, not pull one other under the water.

Yet spiritual platitudes and bubble gum New Age philosophy no longer suffice to deal with the growing level of insanity that seems to be gripping our world. If there is no real compassion and wisdom at the core of our spiritual beliefs, then they are merely empty illusions.

Unfortunately, I feel this perception of global insanity will only escalate, as humanity continues to drag its collective feet, refusing to wake up and deal with the real issues that are rising to the surface. Those of us who have been awake for a while have earnestly desired for all this insanity to be over and done with by now. However, manifesting real peace and transformation requires some hard work.

Like the proverbial frog, we are slowly boiling in this water with the rest of the world. Internalizing this insanity, over time, takes an emotional toll. That is why self-consciousness, self-compassion, and self-healing are all the more vital to our daily needs, which ultimately is the nature of our spiritual transformation.

The craziness has been amped one hundred-fold. It is way beyond the point of concern. At least it is for anyone half awake to what is going on. Those not completely doped with – whatever mind-numbing device or substance, willingly administered or not. It’s a challenge indeed to find the words to express the enormity of the derangement of the collective psyche. For what else can it be?

We cannot help but subscribe to the ‘us and them’ mentality. Whether at the level of religious belief, of nationhood, or of the controllers – that is the authority figures and the elite that control them – and the rest of us. Always this divide. The schisms that once were have become monumental chasms, tearing apart the fabric of our society and it seems, our very humanity.

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules
When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
There’s room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill.

– John Lennon, Working Class Hero

Like you, I have been reading on sites like these, advice and suggestions on how to survive this chaos. We are told to become more spiritual, to see beyond the propaganda, to disconnect from the common grid, to eat this, drink this – or don’t eat this or drink that. We are advised to do meditation, yoga, this or that therapy. Countless spiritual sorts (myself not excluded) are offering their services in astrology, numerology, tarot – whatever – in a quest to help others and find meaningful work for themselves both. How many of us are writing columns such as this as we attempt to make sense of it all? We are inundated with new narratives to explain what is really going on. Of course there are conspiracies. Legions of them. If you haven’t got that by now – there’s nothing I can say.

All the spiritual, well intentioned advice is becoming tired. I’m sorry. But it is. Actually, a better word would be exhausted. It is exhausted from over-use. And paradoxically, despite all the words, it hasn’t got us very far. Am I sounding superior? I don’t mean to be. I do not mean to glide over the fact that we are all in different places and therefore one man’s spiritual food evokes another’s gag reflex.

Be that as it may – it seems crystal clear – we’re all still fucking peasants. (John Lennon was clearly a truth teller as well as a visionary). Why??? Why isn’t it working?? All our searching and learning and sharing and caring. Why do we still feel SO ineffectual – when we witness the atrocities going on in the world. And on another level, why are so many still so friggin’ apathetic?? I mean, WHAT WILL IT TAKE?? ….to wake up, that is. And while in question mode, why has the ‘them and us’ mentality gone from being an insidious under-current to an unspeakably consuming, technicolour, zoomed-in global horror story?

Watching the news– I notice the despair that has been a constant companion these past few years has become something far far more worrying. It feels as if it is taking on literal embodiment. It is no longer ‘just an emotion’ – compassion, empathy, heart break, fear (chemtrails and the reason for them are very very scary) – I experience and then, eventually move on from. Now, it is a swamping grey overcoat I cannot take off. It weighs down body as well as soul.

As an astrologer – I look to the cosmos for clues. This insanity must have some astrological reference point. And it does.

Today, as a matter of fact (Nov 27) as I write, Saturn is making an exact square to Neptune in the heavens. What does this signify? Saturn is about form, structure, boundaries – and borders. Neptune is the opposite of that. It is about dissolution, transcendence, unity. Saturn isolates and defines, Neptune connects and blurs. Saturn is the physical structures of the material world, the controls and authorities we live under. Neptune the amorphous, ethereal, divine. It is spirit, however it manifests in this earthly realm. The square, or 90 degree aspect between these two celestial bodies indicates the coming together of these two distinctly different energy fields will (and does) generate tremendous stress and tension. The coming together of the square aspect has been building through much of the year and now it has peaked. The result is, on an individual level and a collective level, a spiritual crisis. (The two signs involved are Sagittarius and Pisces –both ‘spiritual’ signs.) This is what we are seeing happening in world and very probably, it is what you are feeling within yourself. The old grey overcoat weighing me down to the point it feels positively visceral is a metaphor for the pressure of this misaligned energy that I am feeling. Neptune is creating brain fog. It feels like I’m living in a dream. Some days, a bad one. Or I’m walking through a swamp. There is a feeling the structures and routines that generally define daily life have been undermined. Everything has become blurred. What once seemed clearly to be black or white, is no longer so.

Recently a Russian fighter jet was shot down – allegedly because it was flying in Turkish airspace – momentarily (the Russian pilots deny this). Without going into any further conversation about who actually did shoot down the Russian plane, and on whose authority – for our purposes here it is not difficult to see a blatant metaphor being played out here, of the Saturn-Neptune square. There is confusion (which is Neptune) over borders (or airspace) (which is Saturn). Elsewhere in Europe the theme of borders has been playing out as the wars in the Middle East continue to escalate, causing millions to flee for their lives into countries they believe represent safety. Lately, for so many of these desperate people, the safety of new borders (Saturn) appearing more like a long-lost dream (Neptune) than reality. The clash of the two inducing nightmarish scenarios at border crossings and evoking impassioned and polarised citizens to march in opposition – or support.

There is no normal anymore. Definition and dissolution are at loggerheads. We have no choice comrades, but to engage in this chaos. To escape it is not the answer – though God knows we will try. We all have our particular favourite escapist ploys – for some it is unreality TV, sports, food, for others alcohol, drugs, sex. Even meditation and spiritual practice can be a means of escape. It’s a bugger, but the cosmos wont let us out of this one so easily. We will be compelled to recognize, if not act on, the opposite polarity. And, perversely, the ultimate purpose, if there is one, of this current energy signature is to release our attachment to polarity, to duality. We do this when we are able to integrate the two distinct energies and more often than not, this requires us to initially redirect our consciousness towards the less familiar or attractive polarity. That is, if we are too rigid, too caught up in boundaries, rules, limitations, outside authorities we will need to bend, to let go, to release, to embrace a more unified perspective, to think for ourselves and to act on our own imperatives. On the other hand, if we are too removed from the harsh realities of the material world, too fond of escaping into our own dream world, too unrealistic, too idealistic, then we will need to shift. We will need to be more disciplined, practical, pro-active. The winds of change have become hurricane force – we have no option but to adapt.

This is a time for purification and refinement and if we do not get it now, we have two more opportunities next year, as Saturn and Neptune meet up again in June and September. Part of the equation of this energetic dynamic is a deep questioning of our worldview, our belief systems and our personal goals. I wrote this article from exactly that place. Questioning long-held beliefs about right and wrong, about the nature of reality, of spirituality, of life itself. Are you doing the same? I’m picking yes. But there is one truth I will never doubt and that is the truth we are all one. We are fundamentally, deeply interconnected. Sadly, too many people on the planet at this time – believe otherwise. There is no other explanation for the manipulations, conspiracies, connivances and contrivances of the folks on the hill.

We must not lose hope however. And that is all I will say. Anything else could be hypocritical, as I am struggling right now with this classic Neptune-Saturn hit on my psyche – that is, my own rapidly diminishing hope for a better world. Ah! But I then remember this and hold on to the thought that perhaps my thinking, my conscious can create a better reality:

In a Native American parable, the Creator gathers all the animal and says:

‘I want to hide something from humans until they are ready for it – the realisation
That they create their own reality.’
‘Give it to me. I’ll fly I to the Moon,’ says the eagle.
‘No, one day soon they will go there and find it’
‘How about the bottom of the ocean?’ asks the salmon.
‘No, they will find it there too’
‘I will bury it in the great plains,’ says the buffalo.
‘They will soon dig and find it there.’
‘Put it inside them,’ says the wise grandmother mole.
‘Done,’ says the Creator. ‘It is the last place they will look.’